


I Still Remember Them

by corruptedkid



Series: descend!verse [4]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Brainwashing, descendverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 09:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corruptedkid/pseuds/corruptedkid
Summary: It took Ghoul much too long to remember Jet and Kobra, but once he did, he could never forget.





	I Still Remember Them

**Author's Note:**

> okay i didn't mean for this to be the next in the series, but it just sort of happened. i promise killer king is next.
> 
> ghoul got a happy ending, but a healthy ending?? for _him_?? no such thing that boy's fucked up

Ghoul sat on the edge of the roof, his feet hanging over the edge and dipping into the nighttime shadows. 

Poison was sound asleep in the diner below - Ghoul had made sure of that. He’d felt a little bad leaving Poison alone, but his breathing had been easy, with no signs of an oncoming nightmare. Actually, he was sleeping better than he had in weeks. Ghoul thought it would be best not to disturb him. 

And some things were best dealt with alone, anyway.

Ghoul stared up at the sky. He could barely tell where the horizon ended and the sky began, it was all so obscured by darkness. Not for the first time, he wished that he could see the stars, if only for some indication of where the boundaries between heaven and earth lay. He spent a lot of time thinking about boundaries.

Life. Death. Memory.

Memory was all he had left of Jet and Kobra. Memory was what had kept him from realizing when he’d lost them. In the end, it wasn’t BLi that had cut him the deepest, but his own mind.

There was a reason Ghoul didn’t like discussing their deaths with Poison. Several reasons, actually. Poison didn’t get agitated the way he used to, ready to pick a fight with the dracs just to let out his rage at BLi, but that had never been the biggest problem. He was always so determined to make Ghoul feel like it hadn’t been his fault that he’d forgotten them.

But it had been.

Ghoul knew that at the basic level, it was BLi’s fault for wiping his memories; that much was obvious. But beyond that… Once he’d been taken off the pills, once reality had been staring him in the face, he _still_ hadn’t realized. Poison had come back from Linda Vista a wreck, mourning the death of his crewmates for days, and Ghoul hadn’t known a thing. Not a flicker of recollection. Two of his best friends in the fucking world had been ghosted, and it hadn’t affected him in the slightest.

He could never quite understand why.

It had taken Poison, what? A few months to regain his memories? Less than that, really; once he’d started acting as a rebel, it had been a matter of days. All the other patients had been the same. Once they’d started working with Poison and Pete, it had never taken long.

Except with Ghoul.

Well, and with Bob, but he didn’t count. He was shit. He’d been so wrapped up in his web of lies, trying to serve BLi and the killjoys equally, Ghoul supposed there wasn’t room in his head for much else. No, Bob didn’t count. Ghoul’s situation was a unique one. An anomaly.

Maybe he was just weak. He must have been; otherwise he would have _known_.

Ghoul bowed his head, letting the memories wash over him. Jet’s hair bouncing as he laughed, Kobra pulling up on his motorbike in a cloud of dust; the two of them complaining about their helmets in the desert heat. Kobra helping Poison dye his hair. Jet carrying the Girl on his shoulder.

And the Girl - she was just another nail in the coffin. How on earth could Ghoul have forgotten _her_? 

He wished he could’ve mourned them at the appropriate time, instead of like this. Poison had already moved on, for the most part. The fact that he could talk about them without crying or punching the wall was enough proof. But Ghoul hadn’t known they had died until months after, so he was still stuck with the grief and the guilt which he was so well deserving of, and he had to suffer through it alone.

He could apologize to them a million times, and it wouldn’t be enough. It felt like a betrayal that he hadn’t remembered them even when they died. The thought ran on endless loop through his mind - _he should have known_. It should have caused some kind of disturbance in the force, a discomfort that even his pill-addled brain would recognize. Surely something so horrible should have broken through the walls.

Ghoul felt like punching himself in the face every time he thought about it.

But it needed to be thought about. _They_ needed to be thought about. He to mourn them properly, the way he hadn’t been able to before -

“Ghoul?”

Shit. 

Poison’s voice was soft and blurry at the edges; he was still half-asleep, Ghoul could tell without turning around. He waited, and sure enough, Poison sat down next to him and leaned against his shoulder. Ghoul could feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

“You thinkin’ about them?” Poison murmured.

“Mm-hmm.”

There was a long pause. 

“Do you remember when we were sitting on the Trans Am and the Girl asked about the stars?” Poison asked. 

Ghoul thought back. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t be sure if he truly remembered or not. The killjoys had spent so many years together; there was no way they would all recall the same things. 

“I might,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason. ‘S just a good memory.”

Ghoul silently wrapped one arm around Poison’s waist. He didn’t have much to say, and he knew what was coming in the end.

It only took another minute.

“Frankie, you gotta stop beating yourself up over this.”

Ghoul sighed. There it was. “I’m not beating myself up,” he said. “It’s just how things are.”

“No, it’s not,” said Poison. He sounded more awake now, more insistent. “There was no way you could’ve realized. And they wouldn’t blame you, you know. It’s not like you went over to BLi or anything. You just couldn’t think right for a while. It’s fixed now, and that’s what matters.”

“No,” Ghoul said bitterly, “What matters is that I was so easy to break that it took forever to put me back together again.”

Poison pulled back a bit. “Ghoul,” he whispered. “Don’t say that. Please. What they did to you, it doesn’t reflect on you at all. What can I do to make you see that?”

Ghoul shrugged. “Don’t know if it’s possible.”

“They _tortured_ us, Ghoul. They did all that therapy shit, and the pills - they changed everything about how our bodies worked, down to the deepest level. None of it was in our control. There was no way to just magically break out of it.”

“Funny, that’s what happened in the end.”

“It takes time,” Poison said gently. “Some people are buried a little deeper than others.” He brushed Ghoul’s hair back from his forehead, running his fingers through it. 

“The only other person buried as deep as me was a traitor,” Ghoul said quietly. “You can’t say you haven’t wondered why.”

“I did wonder why it took so long,” Poison admitted. “More back then than I do now. But that was just because I wanted you back so bad. I never blamed you.”

Ghoul let out a slow breath. “I just wish I… I could’ve felt this the way I was supposed to. It hurts like fuck now, obviously, but I don’t think it’ll ever feel _right_. Like the whole process got tainted somehow. I don’t know.”

Poison hummed. He rested his head on Ghoul’s shoulder for a while, letting silence fall once more. Ghoul was starting to wonder if he’d fallen asleep when he spoke again.

“Do you remember their last fight? When I lost you?”

Ghoul shivered. He couldn’t possibly forget it. “Yeah, of course I do.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

Ghoul’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Your version of it. Tell me what happened,” said Poison.

Ghoul knew better than to question Poison’s request. He just reached back into his memories, cringing at what he found.

“We were fighting the dracs,” he said. “They were everywhere; tons of them. I couldn’t keep track of it all. I just saw the Girl getting dragged off, and then Jet and Kobra were barely holding it together, and then they went down, and then I saw you… There were dracs all over you, pinning you down. I thought you were fucked. And then they got me, and that was the end.” It was a rather abbreviated version, but he didn’t want to go into the details. Sometimes he could still feel the white-gloved hands around his throat. 

Poison startled him by squeezing his hand tightly. 

“That’s it,” he said fiercely. “You’d just seen them go down, and you thought they were about to kill me, too. You’d just watched your whole family die, Ghoul. And you wonder why BLi fucked you up so bad? Maybe you had to hide so deep in your own head because you were scared of the alternative. You were scared to be alone. Is that such a crime?”

Ghoul’s heart clenched. Poison’s words hit a little too close to home, and not in a good way. “Does it matter what the reason was? They fucked me up easy, Gee. That’s called being weak.”

“No,” said Poison. “That’s called being human.”

Ghoul’s breath caught in his throat. He swallowed hard, his thoughts stopping and starting again. 

“It’s okay to feel guilty,” Poison said softly. “But don’t you ever for one second think it was your fault you got hurt. They got ghosted, you got brainwashed. Kobra would kick your ass for getting so worked up over so simple a thing as not remembering.”

“But it’s more than just that,” Ghoul whispered. “It feels like… Like I let them down or something, Gee -”

“I know,” said Poison. “Believe me, I know.” He kissed Ghoul’s cheek softly. “Let’s go back inside.”

Ghoul laced his fingers in with Poison’s. They slowly stood up, backing away from the edge of the roof.

“They loved you,” Poison said quietly. “And so do I. So I’m not gonna let you blame yourself for something that doesn’t deserve blame.”

Ghoul’s chest still felt too tight.

But later, as he lay curled in Poison’s arms, some of the weight seemed to lift. His thoughts slowed enough for him to drift off to sleep.

And that night, his sleep was dreamless.


End file.
